- shinasadame 68 Hyakunin joro (Commentaries on One Hundred Young Women), 1723
This work depicts in two volumes the everyday life of Edo-period women, collecting in its pages images of court and samurai ladies, townswomen, country girls, geisha and sex workers, who perform a kaleidoscope of daily tasks and amusements. The images are preceded by considerable comment on the different kinds of women and their activities. Volume one begins with a female emperor and court ladies (top), and then introduces samurai women and a broad range of classes of women at various tasks. Volume two, in contrast, begins with ‘professional’ women of pleasure, the high-ranked courtesans of Shimabara, Kyoto’s official pleasure quarter (bottom). We are then introduced to the women of Edo’s Yoshiwara and Osaka’s Shinmachi quarters, leading to the final image in the book, a ‘night hawk’ streetwalker, or yotaka. All the women are depicted as elegant and gentle, one hardly different from the other. Sex workers were officially considered to be outcasts, below the class and status ranking system. So giving them equal space in the same book to all the other recognized classes put together was significant. This is further - ’ of the title complicated by the fact that in the Edo period the word ‘joro could refer to upper-class women and to women in general, as well as to sex workers. - shinasadame was published in Kyoto in 1723, Hyakunin joro - shokubon), and it is immediately after the banning of erotic books (ko famous today because it was censored by the Bakufu authorities, even though it shows only women and includes absolutely no scenes of sex or romance. This title, and its erotic sequel Hime kagami, which does depict samurai and courtiers having sex, appeared at a period of high - ho - reforms of the 1720s, particularly with regard tension during the Kyo to the newly enacted regulations on publishing.1 These books may have been banned simply because they transgressed a fundamental premise of the samurai government – strict distinctions of social class and status. Any attempt to make different spheres of social life appear to be equal and homogenous was considered an affront to the Tokugawa system. Later editions of the book, even in the modern era, often excluded the empress illustration. [AGR]